I'm currently running Mandrake 9.1 with the Ati driver under a ati 9700pro card.
What can i do if i want to change screen depht?
If i use Mandrake control center it tell me that i run at only 16 bit depht......and there aren't other modes!
I think that's because of the proprietary drivers........if i want to know the bit depht or i i want to change it,what can i do?
Thanks in advance.

Go into the console and go to /etc/X11. Then look for a file for XF86Config-4. Type su and type your root's password. Use a text editor to open it up like vi and search for depth. You can change the depth to 8, 16, 24, 32. 24 bit is photographic (16.7M colors), 16 bit is 65K colors, 8 is 256 colors.

Another way is go into Mandrake Control Center. Click on system and display. You can then change it there. Make sure you test it to see if it works before logining out.

To apply the settings. All you have to do is log out. Then press ctrl+alt+bksp. This should reset the X Window Server. You should be in the depth, resolution, or refresh rate that you want.

It's strange because in mcc i can change only the resolution (even with screen res that the monitor don't support like 1600*1200 ecc ecc)and the bit depth is only 16 bit O_O
in xfree config 4 i think because i have disabled (and don't know how...)the setting of the monbitor automatic (the plung and play....or dcc i think).
It's for that option?

I assume Mandrake's thing is accurate but if you want to know your depth, 'xdpyinfo' will give you all kinds of info, including depth. Probably Mandrake's thing is just a frontend to that or whatever that's based on. Still cool though - I bet it tells you more in one dump than hunting through the widgets trying to get info out of them. 'xwininfo -root' is a pretty concise report. You can pipe any of that through 'grep -i depth' to get an even more concise report.

Sometimes I love Linux.

But, yeah, to change it, follow Electro's advice.

-- Oops. I was busy playing around with my own display info and didn't hit refresh. I didn't follow that last bit. Maybe Electro can help. I like being in runlevel 3 - it's easy to just back up my last working config and then hack at the config file. If anything goes wrong I usually get dumped to the command line again with an error message and make more edits. If it doesn't work, I can restore the original file. So you might just reconfigure the whole thing.

The commands you give me tell tha i use true color 24 bitplane (i change to 32 because i think that the radeon 9700 handle it better....) but mandrake still continue to say "16 bit" hehe....i try to change to 32 bit in xfree86config4......mandrake i think is broken 'cause of the fglrx driver.